1. Field of the Invention
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to a system and method for controlling server usage in a peer-to-peer (P2P) based streaming service.
2. Discussion of the Background
A peer-to-peer (P2P) service refers to a service in which data or information is received directly from peer terminals such as personal computers that are connected to a network such as the Internet, and may be different from a conventional scheme of searching for information on the Internet using a search engine.
Further, ‘streaming’ refers to a technology for playback of a file by receiving the file in real time through a network. For example, progressive streaming is one type of streaming technologies.
When the streaming technology is applied to a P2P technology, server load or service load may be reduced, such that cost reduction for the server operation may be realized. In order to achieve the foregoing, a client using a P2P-based streaming service may incorporate a function for the P2P-based streaming service into a content player to play back a content, such as a multimedia file, and communicates with a server providing the P2P-based streaming service. More particularly, a server may provide a list of contents available on a web page, and the client may select a desired content in the list by clicking the desired content. When the content is selected, the content player installed in the client is executed to play back the selected content. The content player plays back the selected content by receiving the content from the server and other peers using the P2P-based streaming technology. The client and other peers may also be referred to as a peer client.
If a user of the client accesses a server to use P2P-based streaming service and selects a content, a peer having the selected content is identified and connected to the client in order to provide the content to the client. That is, the content player of the client plays back file pieces of the selected content by receiving the file pieces of the content from the server or other connected peers having the content.
In a P2P-based streaming service, server usage is determined in advance by computing a maximum sharing ratio based on a prediction for the number of expected online visitors (the number of expected concurrent users or the number of expected concurrent connections). However, an initial server usage is much higher than the server usage at the peak number of concurrent connections. Thus, it is difficult to calculate more accurate network cost because of the difficulty of an accurate prediction for the number of concurrent connections in advance. A service provider pays more network cost due to the high initial server usage since the network cost is determined based on the peak of server usage. Thus, there is a problem of paying more network usage cost.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form any part of the prior art nor what the prior art may suggest to a person of ordinary skill in the art.
Hereinafter, a system and method for dynamically determining server usage will be provided.